Transcript
Ali Beth Stuckey (0:00)
The new mayor of New York City was sworn in on the Quran and is encouraging us to embrace the warmth of collectivism. Hmm. What has the warmth of collectivism looked like for the past 100 years? Also, Tim Walls has dropped out of the governor race because of Somalian fraud there in the state. And Tucker Carlson is warning us about the danger of Islamophobia. Happy 2026 and welcome to Relatable. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com use code ALI@ checkout. That's Goodranchers. Do code Ally. Hey, y'. All. Happy New Year and happy Monday. It is January 5th in the year of our Lord 2026. And to kick off this first episode of Relatable for the year, we do have some breaking news. This is exclusive to Relatable. Let me just check my notes to make sure that I have this correct. Yes, it is correct. God's eternal plan of redemption is going off without a hitch. Everything is going according to his plan without fail, without faltering. And because of that, today is a great day. Today is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Today is a great day to do the next right thing in faith, with excellence, and for the glory of God. And so let us kick off not only this day and this week with that really, really good news, but this year, God's mercies are new every morning. Lamentations 3:23 reminds us of that. And so no matter what happened last year or yesterday or in the last hour, God's mercies are new for you. And that is really great news. In the stucky world. We had a wonderful, mostly restful break in our home. We had lots of quality family time. We had lots of brisket. That is chief relay to bro signature. It's so good. Every time he makes brisket, it is like, top notch. I think he could sell it. It's so good. We had lots of cookies. But I am excited and grateful. Even though the break was so wonderful and so good, I am so excited to be back here and I'm so grateful to be with you all. So thankful for all of you who allow Relatable to exist and have allowed it to exist for, let's see, it's 20, 26 or eight years, almost eight years in March. For those who are new, if you are new to Relatable, it's your New Year's resolution to listen to Relatable. That's a great resolution. Welcome. I am Ali Beth Ducky I am a Christian, I'm a wife, I'm a mom. I have been hosting Relatable like I just said, since 2018. Coming up on those eight years, that's crazy. Almost a decade we have been talking about culture, theology, parenting, health, news, politics from a Christian conservative perspective. For all of that time, we have talked to Donald Trump, we've talked to Kat von D, John MacArthur, Candace Cameron Bure. So many other people, so many other people over the years. Most of our audience is women. Most of those women are young moms. But we have lots of people in lots of different age ranges and backgrounds and stages of life. And we also, of course love and appreciate our related bros. I host a women's conference called Share the Arrows every year. We've done that twice. Where the women who attend here from, I believe the most solid Christian teachers of our day about how to apply the word of God to every area of our lives learning. Last year God graciously allowed 6,700 women to come to this conference. Lord willing, we will be announcing the date for share the arrows 2026 very soon. So stay tuned for that. Uh, that is my quick introduction and summary about who I am, what I do here. If you want to know more about what I believe really about any subject, or if you want to see if I've talked to a certain person, I have lots and lots of episodes for you to catch up on and you can just type in my name, relatable Ali Beth Stuckey and the subject that you're looking for or the guest that you're looking for. And all of these are available wherever you watch or you listen to your podcast today. I want to set us up. This is for me and for all of you to give us some context to see where we are as we start this year, 2026. We have just come out of that kind of two week period where we don't know what day of the week it is, we don't know what's going on. Your diet fell off the rails, your routine is all out of whack and it feels like those first few moments after waking up from a long nap in the middle of the day, which I have not done in a long time. But if you think back to maybe your college days when you're like, you're done with class, you go to bed, you wake up at 6pm and you're totally disoriented and you're bleary eyed and you're like, okay, where am I? What time is it what am I supposed to be doing right now? And those are actually the exact three questions that I want to address today. Where are we? What time is it? And what are we supp to be doing right now? As Christians, as women, as moms, I want us to orient ourselves as best as we can so that we don't spend the first quarter of the year, the first half of the year getting our bearings while there is work to be done in this world, in our lives, in our community. So right now we need to understand where exactly we are, what moment we're in in this timeline of eternity and what our role is and all of that. As you guys know, I've been saying this for a long time. Clarity is kindness and courage is contagious. And so today, as always, I want you to end this episode feeling like I have passed on to you by the grace of God, both clarity and courage. Because times are really confusing and maybe more confusing than they've ever been in a lot of ways. And I'll explain that and the gifts that we can give to those around us, to our kids, to our friends, to our neighbors, whomever is in our big or small circle of influence, our clarity and courage. So where are we? What time is it? And what should we be doing? At first we will answer where we are. This involves looking at where we are as a country, politically, ideologically, by looking at a few big things happening that say a lot about this moment. Mamdani in New York, Maduro in Venezuela, the Islamic Marxist alliance that no longer dominates just the left, but is actually growing and influence popularity on the right as well. And then what time is it? And this has a spiritual answer. So we'll look at what this all means about the spiritual moment that we're in. And what does God's word say about all of this? How should we be thinking about these issues that we're going through? And then lastly, what is our role? What should we be doing as Christians, as citizens, also as moms and wives and neighbors and friends, church members? Where are we? What time is it? What should we be doing? So whether you are waking up from a two week slumber because of Christmas break or whether you have spent your whole life unplugged from the goings on of the world and what the truth of God's word says about them, it's time to wake up. The verse that came to mind while preparing this segment was Ephesians 5:14. Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. You guys know as I've said many times that politics matter because policy matters, because people matter. The ideas behind our politics affect our policy, which affects people. Politics matter because policy matters, because people matter to God and to us. And so by me sharing that verse and infusing the word of God into our political worldview is not to make politics primary, but it is to say that it is an important aspect of our lives because it affects the people that we are called to love. So what we think about the issues that we're going through today, it really matters because it has a tangible impact on image bearers of God. All right, before we get into it, let me pause. Let me tell you about our first sponsor for the day. It's Paleo Valley, y'. All. I love Paleo Valley. They make so many good clean products. I love their of protein, their bone broth powder. That is a really great way to get protein and get good ingredients and different things that you're making for your kids, like Mac and cheese and all of that because it has like a savory kind of taste. And if you're trying to sneak good nutrients into your kid's diet, that's a great way to do it. But they also have these 100 grass fed beef sticks. This is not like the beef jerky that you grew up with. They use 100% grass fed and finished beef from small scale regenerative American farms. So sometimes you see beef that says grass fed but not grass finished. That means they might feed the cow some grass, but then they're just filling them with all kind of with all kinds of junk at the end of their life in order to fatten them up. But that's not what you're getting from Paleo Valley. They also have zero preservatives, no gluten, no soy, no refined sugar, no no dairy, no GMOs. Instead of unhealthy artificial preservatives, Paleo Valley uses good for the gut old world fermenting methods to maintain shelf life. So this is a snack with a really high standard. This is a great way to make sure that you are hitting your protein goals in the new year. They also have all different kinds of flavors. These are great to travel with. So easy. They last a long time. You should check out all of their products, but you'll definitely love this one. Go to paleovalley.com use code ALI at checkout for 15 off your first order. That's paleovalley.com code ALI. Okay, this first question, where are we? Well, we are in a place where Islam and Marxism are unabashedly allying to crush Western civilization. Now, I'll be honest, I must have not had my finger on the pulse exactly when it came to socialism. I thought that we were kind of done with that after Bernie Sanders didn't win the presidential primary after. And aoc, yes, she of course, is still in political power. She still has some influence, but her brand kind of fell out of vogue. She wasn't as trendy anymore. And you just didn't hear this word socialism or democratic socialism quite as much. I did not realize that people were still buying this nonsense. But here we are. This combination of Islamic dominance and Marxism is actually embodied in one person. And this is the new mayor of New York City. His name is Zoran Mamdani. He just celebrated his inauguration and gave this speech. And it's troubling. A lot of people, including me, saw one. We will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. All right, we're going to hone in on that last line. Mamdani was also sworn in on the Quran. We'll get to the Islamic aspect of this in a second. But first let's focus on what he just said there. The elevation of the ideology of collectivism. The warmth of collectivism, he said, which is responsible for the deaths of at least a hundred million people in the 20th century alone. And I posted that on X and I posted it on Instagram, and I got some people asking, genuinely, wait, what does that mean? What is collectivism? And what do you mean by saying that it's responsible for a hundred million deaths in only the 1900s? So let's break this down. Collectivism is the umbrella term for communism, socialism, and I would even say fascism, because all of these systems, in their own ways, prioritize the good of the group over the good of the individual. And maybe with that definition, you think, okay, that sounds good. That sounds compassionate. You're taking care of those who can't take care of themselves. Maybe you even think that that sounds Christian. But here's the catch. The government gets to define what that good is, and you, as the individual, do not get a say. It's also not just for the benefit of the group at the expense of the benefit for the individual, but it is also the rights, so called, of the group at the expense of the rights of the individual. And if you don't understand exactly what that means, you don't have to take my word for it. In my description, we can look at what collectivism actually has looked like tangibly throughout history. And we don't have to go back that far. If we look at, for example, Communist Cambodia in the 1970s, Pol Pot imposed agrarian collectivism. That means he abolished all private land ownership. He forced people out of cities and into these rural communes. He confiscated all money, he shut down all markets, he forced people to work in rice fields. And this was to create what sounded very compassionate, very oppressionless. And that was a classless society. And theoretically, there would be no more inequality, there would be no more oppression of the poor, because the rich guy wouldn't have more than the little guy. And this was to accomplish what they called a reset. That probably sounds familiar if you've been listening to this podcast. And an arrival at year zero, where the communists believed that they could start over and build a new classless, oppressionless, oppositionless society where everyone would share and everyone would be happy because everyone would have what they need. And so to achieve this end, forcing people out of the cities, forcing them into these communes, 2 million Cambodians were killed, 25% of the population, hundreds of thousands died from starvation. The communal farms didn't work. They couldn't produce the food that was necessary. Other hundreds of thousands were tortured to death. They were murdered with pickaxes, specifically because Khmer Rouge, the regime of Pol Pot, wanted to save bullets. The murders were so vast in Pol Pot's communist world that there were swaths of land dubbed the killing fields. Maybe you've heard of books about this or maybe you've heard of the killing fields. There are documentaries, there are a lot of historical analyses of what was going on in these killing fields and how horrific it is. I just will give you a trigger warning. If you're going to learn about this, you need to. You need to prepare yourself because it's not for the faint of heart. Children were kidnapped from families and forced to serve in the regime. The slogan of Khmer Rouge was, to keep you is no gain, and to lose you is no loss. And that right there, that slogan typifies, it summarizes what the warmth of collectivism is. That is the warmth of collectivism, that as long as the collective goal is being achieved in the eyes of the government, in the eyes of the leader, the individual doesn't matter at all. The country still has not fully recovered 50 years later. That's what communism does. That's what collectivism does. Destroys. And then if you look at China in the mid 20th century, China's communist leader, Mao Zedong, set out to create this classless communist society again, to alleviate the oppression that came from inequality. And so first he implemented land reform, in which private land was seized from the evil landlords and redistributed to peasants. That actually is very familiar, very similar to a lot of the rhetoric that you hear from someone like Zoran Mamdani, that these private landowners or these landlords are really the cause and the source of the oppression, which, of course, is not true. Now, it sounds compassionate to redistribute land and property to peasants, but the landlords were publicly tortured. They were humiliated in what were called struggle sessions. And these rituals were used not just for landlords, as they were in the beginning, but they were used for decades to shame Mao's political opposition. I mean, people were literally put in the city center and they were flogged and they were shamed and they were made fun of, and they were tortured until they relented, until they said, okay, I support Mao or I relent on whatever position I had that was not acceptable to the communist regime. Many of these landlords were just outright executed, as was most of the political opposition. There was a great leap forward in communist China of the late 50s and early 60s that attempted to turn China from agrarian to industrial. And this meant abolishing all private farming and turning all farming communal, much like Cambodia. And this was collective forced labor to produce the food that would then be distributed to all who needed it. Of course, it didn't work. 40 million people died from starvation. This was actually the deadliest famine in human history. The deadliest famine in human history was because of communism. It wasn't the Irish potato famine. It wasn't some famine in the middle ages or in biblical times. The deadliest famine in all of human history happened in the 1960s in China because of communism, because of the warmth of collectivism. Mao's cultural revolution from the 60s to the 70s recruited kids into the Red Guard, which was responsible for murdering all those that were perceived as the enemies of communism. And so, all in all, scholars estimate that up to 80 million people were murdered or died as a result of Mao's policies in those 27 years of his reign. That is the warmth of collectivism. And we could go on and on. Lenin and Stalin's Russia, which forced collectivism and abolished individualism and killed about 20 million people. Mugabe, Zimbabwe, which promised liberation from the colonizer and redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor via forced collectivism and is irreparably plummeted a once wealthy country into poverty and oppression. The Philippines Germany, so many others. When you push collectivism, people die. It's not better, not for anyone, ever, in any way. It is evil. It sounds good because it's sold via toxic empathy. Look at this poor person and this rich person. Don't you want to fight for the little guy? Isn't it unfair that this rich guy has so much and this little guy has so little? Isn't it unfair that you struggle while you're. While your landlord is getting rich by charging you so much rent? Wouldn't it feel good to take from this rich, powerful guy and give to the little guy? It sounds good, but it doesn't work. Ever. And that's exactly why two of the big Ten Commandments have to do with the legitimacy of private property. Or that's part of why God says in two of the Ten Commandments, you shall not steal, and not only that, but you shall not covet. So not only do you not have the right to what someone else has, you can't even want what someone else has. It's not yours. Now, did Israel have an obligation to care for the poor? Yes. The foreigner, yes, but not through the abolition of private property and forced communal labor. By the way, I find it interesting that the progressives who like to cite and misrepresent the Old Testament rules about helping the needy are not at all interested in the Old Testament rules when it comes to homosexuality and immigration and things like that. They also cite the early church, and they'll say this was communism. But the early church in Acts gave what they had to one another and had, quote, all things in common. But they did so voluntarily. They were not forced to give up the property at gunpoint by the government, which is what collectivism is. They were empowered by the Holy Spirit to do so. That's the only way this works. Work in production and earning. What you have are biblical ideas. Adam was placed in the garden to relax. No, to work and to keep it. Genesis 2:15. The curse was not work. The curse was working and producing nothing. Proverbs praises diligence and condemns not working, saying, a slack hand causes poverty. Proverbs 10, 4second Thessalonians 3:10 condemns slothfulness, insisting that one who is not willing, not unable, but not willing to work, shouldn't even eat. Generosity is a biblical idea, but generosity by nature is not forced. You paying taxes is not generous. If you don't, you'll go to jail. So that's not generosity. 2 Corinthians 9:7 says that God loves a cheerful giver, not One who gives because they're forced to under compulsion. So there's nothing biblical about collectivism. It steals, it kills, it destroys. Who does that sound like now? What about individualism? Individualism is the idea that you are responsible for your actions, your future, and that through hard work you can succeed. This is not to be confused with selfishness or self centeredness, however, which says that the individual's desires and ambitions always matter more than anyone else's needs. That's not good either. The foundational American belief, which is a biblical belief, is that the individual matters in and of himself, that he has incredible value because he is a person and people are made by a Creator who, as our Declaration of Independence, independent states, has given us the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of property that no government can arbitrarily take away. Not in the name of power, not in the name of compassion, not in the name of vengeance, not in the name of anything. We also believe in the individual's ability to chart his own path, to take ownership of his or her life, to start a family, to work hard, and to really, truly own what he has, not just rent it from the government. We don't negate the importance of shared values as a nation. They're actually necessary for us to function. We do have to have some sort of collective value system. We don't negate the necessity of community and church and family. In fact, I love this quote by Milton Friedman, the Economist. He said the family rather than the individual has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society. Collectivism not only diminishes the individual, it attempts to replace the family. Whether it's Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler, every collectivist dictator attempts to weaken the family because the dad, mom, child entity is so perfectly designed by God as a bulwark against predators. Whether in the government or otherwise, the weaker ones are protected by the stronger. The woman nurturing the child and tempering the man, the man fighting for and protecting the woman and child. Christianity, therefore, is inherently problematic for tyrants, especially the collectivist kind, because of its reliance on the cohesion of the family, but also because of its insistence upon worshiping God, not the government, relying on the church, not the state, working for and earning what you have and taking care of those in need yourself, rather than stealing what is needed from others via politicians. Christianity is and should be a boil on the back of dictatorship. We should be an obstacle to those who wish to do harm to the most vulnerable. That has been our history. You should read the Gulag Archipelago and you'll learn about the warmth of collectivism and how Christianity stood against tyranny in the 20th century. That is our legacy. That is our history. And it still has to be today. From Nero to Newsom, from Mussolini to Mamdani, Christ reigns. And Christians, simply by being Christians, have to live that out with clarity and courage. From the seventh century when Islam was established to today, for 1300 years, Christianity has had to defend itself for 2000 years, not only against tyrants, but 1300 years also against the attacks of Islamists. And for some reason, some people think that things are different now. They're not. The mayor of an American city putting his hand on the Quran for his swearing in is not a positive or neutral sign. It is a sign that we are being conquered by this Islamist Marxist machine and regime. We'll get into more of that in just a second. Let me pause tell you about our next sponsor for the day and that is EveryLife. I'm so thankful for EveryLife Diapers and Wipes. I love that they're made out of really clean materials, but also that they work. The diapers are leak proof. They're really strong. 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In many ways it is the hub of American industry and at one time the crown jewel of American life, like New York City is often what people abroad think about exclusively. When they think about America, it's like New York, Texas, Alligators Beach. It is, whether we like it or not, the international representation of America's brand. Which is exactly why of course on September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda, a Muslim terrorist Group targeted New York City in an attack that killed 2,753 people. And this was the deadliest attack on our soil. It tops Pearl harbor, it tops the Oklahoma City bombing and every other act of aggression on American land since the Civil War. This was mass murder. And it was committed by Muslims who hate America and hate the west and hate Christians and Jews. What Bin Laden called this Zionist crusader alliance. And they felt that it was their duty to Allah to kill as many Americans as possible. And that was only 24 and a half years ago. And now here we are in that very, very place, allowing that very ideology to gain power and prominence in New York and throughout the country. Now listen, am I saying that Mamdani is in any way responsible for that? No, he's not. And he shouldn't be held responsible for that. We don't believe in generational responsibility and collective punishment. No Muslim is responsible for what another Muslim does, just as no Christian or no white person or no Chinese person, etc. Is responsible for the actions of someone who shares their creed or skin color or nationality. We've talked many times about the definition of justice according to the God who created justice. When we look at God's law giving to Israel, we see what legal justice is. And it is, among other things, direct. No one bears a punishment for what their father did. Ezekiel 18:20 says, the soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the sun. But that's not the argument for the warning against Islam. The argument is that Islam as a religion is inherently violent, inherently imperialistic, inherently conquest driven, inherently at odds with Christianity, inherently at odds with the Constitution because it is necessarily theocratic. Islam means submission. And the goal of Islam is to make Islamic nations in which Sharia is implemented and all infidels and blasphemers are put to death. And in that world, there's no free speech, there's no freedom of religion, there's no first and second Amendment, there's no rugged individualism. When Charlie Kirk said that Islamic ideology and the Constitution are incompatible, this is what he meant. It's not about demonizing individual Muslims who can be kind neighbors and friends. Of course, this is about the belief system as a whole. And before I give an example of that, I do also just want to point out here, this headline is from Fox News. Mamdani Taps, controversial lawyer who defended Al Qaeda terrorist for top role and called him a powerful advocate. Ramsey Kassem's record Also includes serving as a top advisor for immigration on the White House Domestic Policy Council during the Biden Admin. And so Al Qaeda, the group responsible for the largest terror, terrorist attack, mass murder on American soil just about 25 years ago. The guy who defended them, one of the attorneys who defended them, is now in a position of power in New York City, thanks to Zoran Mamdani. I think that's worth noting. And again, that goes to show that Islam is not apologetic as a whole about those things that have happened, but they understand that this is simply a part of of the process of jihad and Islamic dominance. Here are two scholars, Muslim scholars on Patrick Bet David's show confirming to an ex Muslim that in a Sharia run country, which is the goal, that he would be put to death.